Willows, Fishpond, Dorset. Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944). 1915. Oil on panel. H 34.8 x W 45.7 cm. Manchester Art Gallery. Accession number, 1916.9; gift from the National Art Collections Fund, 1916. Kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).

David Fraser Jenkins describes Fishpond as "a small village near the ridge of a hill looking south towards the sea at Charmouth, three miles away." He explains that Pissarro avoided painting in London during the First World War, in case he was taken for a foreign spy or some such undesirable, so he and Esther sub-let the house in Chiswick where they were then living, and "rented a series of houses in country villages in the south of Britain. He lived at Seaview Cottage in Fishpond from May to November 1915." It was a pleasant cottage (see Meadmore 150).

Pissarro painted many views in the area which his friend James Bolivar Mason (who was then Chief Clerk at the Tate Gallery) tried to sell for him, sometimes to the Tate itself. The tall house here is half-hidden by the trees, on the other side of the lane to which the gate ahead of him gives access. On an overcast day, the distant sea is only distinguishable from the sky by the line of the horizon. The colours are as subtle as the composition. It needs patience and an observant eye to match the contemplative gaze of the artist. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Related Material

Bibliography

Jenkins, David Fraser. Catalogue Entry for High View, Fishpond, 1915 (part of "The Camden Town Group in Context" project). Tate. Web. 11 August 2020.

Meadmore, William Sutton. Lucien Pissarro: Un Coeur Simple. New York: Knopf, 1963.


Created 12 August 2020